What Does 1 Chronicles 15:16 Mean?
And David spoke to the heads of the Levites to appoint their brothers to be the singers with instruments of music, psalteries and harps and cymbals, sounding, by lifting up the voice with joy.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of musick, psalteries and harps and cymbals, sounding, by lifting up the voice with joy.THE KEY
The word rendered “sounding” means making heard, so joy here becomes audible and shareable.
THE MEANING
Voices and instruments take their places together, and joy rises into a sound shared among hearers. A raised voice gives joy a shape others can hear. The verse holds arrangement and celebration in the same moment.
THE ROOT
מַשְׁמִיעִים
mashmi'im
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen.
“sounding” in this verse is mashmi'im. The form here means making something heard. The same root appears in words for hearing and listening, so the music is not just sound produced: it becomes an experience shared by those who receive it.
ALSO GROWS
shama: Hear, listen.
שָׁמַע
This is the root verb beneath the word for sounding; it shows that the music is directed toward hearers.
shemu'ah: Report, news, something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch shows how what is heard can carry meaning, as the music gives joy a public voice.
לְהָרִים
leharim
GROWS FROM
רום
r-w-m
Rise, be high; raise.
“lifting up” in this verse is leharim. The voice is given upward motion: it is raised. A related word, terumah, names a contribution lifted up, so the shared root lets this joyful sound carry the feel of something offered into the common space.
ALSO GROWS
ram: High, elevated.
רָם
This branch makes the upward movement in lifting the voice explicit.
terumah: Contribution, something lifted up.
תְּרוּמָה
It connects the raised voice with something brought forward for others to share.
דָּוִיד
David
GROWS FROM
דוד
d-w-d
Beloved; loved one.
David’s name carries the sense of belovedness. The verse’s gathering of voices into joyful sound unfolds under a name that holds relationship and affection within it.
ALSO GROWS
dod: Beloved; beloved one.
דּוֹד
This is the related word that gives David’s name its sense of belovedness.
dodim: Loves, beloved affections.
דּוֹדִים
This related form extends the name’s root into the language of love and affection.
THE PATTERN
Joyful praise takes audible form through shared voices, instruments, and song.
And it came to be, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one voice heard in praising and in extending the hands to the LORD; and when they lifted their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of song, and praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; his faithful love is for the ages. Then the house was filled with a cloud, the house of the LORD.Praise him with the thrust of the ram's horn; praise him with the harp and the lyre.Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and songs of breath, singing and plucking the strings in your heart to the Lord.THE THREAD
There is no speech and no word where their voice is not heard.The musicians here are described with a form of שמע, “to make heard”; Psalm 19:3 uses that same root for the voice heard across speechless creation. Together, they reveal sound carrying meaning even before it becomes words.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us